Google About To Launch NexusOne Smartphone?

Google is said to be a few hours away from launching its first consumer hardware, an Android-based smartphone called Nexus One, ahead of the forthcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

CES 2010 officially starts on Thursday but observers expect to hear from it formally during a press conference later today. The "Android press gathering" will start at 10am local time (around 8pm UK time tonight) and could also witness the launch of Google first Tablet device as reported yesterday.

The phone has no physical keyboard, comes with a large 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen, is likely to cost around $500 (£312) at launch, is manufactured by HTC and will be sold and marketed only by Google.

There's also a 5-megapixel camera complete with flash and autofocus, light and proximity sensors, an accelerometer and a removable battery that can reportedly power the Nexus One for 24 hours.

Other rumoured specifications include a card reader, 512MB RAM and 512MB onboard memory. The number of applications in the Android Marketplace is slowly growing as well with more than 16,000 already available.

It will also be the first mobile phone to run the Android OS 2.1 and coupled with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz, Cortex A8-based chipset, is likely to be the fastest mobile phone on the planet.

Expect the announcement to be followed by a flurry of reviews, counter reviews, analysis and commentaries from us.

Our Comments

The Nexus One could change telephony forever and show why Google, not Microsoft, has been named the most influential company of the last decade by Fortune Magazine. It beggars belief that Google has been able to push out its phone and not Microsoft.